3.56. Conveniently Entitled

Mature joins a crew of guildies in defeating
the Devourer of Souls in heroic mode,
The Forge of Souls

Looking For Dread

A stream of yellow text dripped down the chat panel while gigantic chunks of the guild were cleaved from the game. Northrend was not looking well. Outside, the frozen wasteland was marred by instability and the virtual world continued to come crashing down. The first sign of trouble was a locked inventory. Buried inside the player's bags were precious items plucked from the land; any attempt to shift goods between the bag slots was met with failure, foreshadowing the server's imminent demise. Food, armor, potions...all commodities were afflicted with the immobilization curse, and no amount of clicking or dragging would free them. To my astonishment, Mature's items freely moved from spot to spot as I performed the server stability sanity test. I was not in the "outside world"; a dungeon instance shielded me from such travesties. Unbeknownst to the n00b, instance servers -- hardware dedicated to providing players access specifically to the dungeons of WoW -- remained separate from the hardware that powered the outside areas of the World. It was here in the Pit of Saron that the game played smoothly for my group and I. You wouldn't have guessed that WoW's infrastructure had just undergone a massive structural upheaval. While the guildies continued to struggle with logging in and staying connected, I blissfully moved from the Forge of Souls to this Pit, soon to make my way through the Halls of Reflection, and what horrors lie in wait.

Patch 3.3 came in with a literal bang. The majority of the explosion was most likely the cry of server blades collapsing under the pressure of the newest changes to the game. Looking for Dungeon, the muchly anticipated dungeon grouping functionality had finally surfaced. For years, anyone outside of a guild slaved over group formation to clear the likes of Scholomance and the Temple of Atal'Hakkar. In those days, dungeons were an investment of time most couldn't afford, so tacking on additional coordination logistics wiped them from the list of playable options to all but the truly masochistic. Blizzard's first attempt to lighten this burden resulted in the advent of Meeting Stones in The Burning Crusade. They were about as effective as a group of raiders in greens attempting Gruul: easing the summoning process didn't help when you had no one to summon. Back to the drawing board they went, emerging at last with LFD in 3.3. At the click of a button, we were in the instance -- no need to travel to the dungeon mouth (once discovered), and no need to summon. Not only did LFD service a huge group of previously precluded players, it expedited guild group formation. As our guild dined on this new feature, LFD paired us with many strangers of guilds we had never heard of. Some weren't even on the Deathwing-US server, as LFD pulled from the pool of our entire Nightfall battlegroup -- a luxury formerly reserved for the PvP crowd. 

The challenge of keeping complete strangers from screwing one another over was handled by LFD's risk / reward system. Wipes would empower the group with bonuses to health, healing and damage, and those players diligent enough to see it through gained fat bonuses of "Emblem of Triumph", which we could then spend at various reputation vendors for upgrades. This subsystem of plugging holes in raiding gear solved a very real problem that had plagued us in TBC and Vanilla: how does one gear out a new recruit for raiding when raiding itself is the only thing that produces gear? The evolution of LFD ended this age-old problem, and my job as both administrator and recruiter grew easier.

I stood firm on my advocation that everyone should get a chance to experience content, and LFD brought this to table in a grand feast. Not everyone saw it in the same light. Critics claimed it diminished the importance of world exploration. As time went on, LFD groups that wiped saw an increase in dropped players who were completely unable to find their way back to the instance:

"Dunno how to get back to the dungeon lol."

My biggest concern with LFD was anonymity. I joined those who supported LFD and made it a rule to randomly queue as much as possible with the intent of assisting those less fortunate than us. But with LFD came exposure to a wide variety of players no longer under our wing. I certainly dictated how our guildies should carry themselves, but random groups of anonymous players claimed no such loyalty. So while I lobbied for my guildies to approach LFD as an opportunity to "sell" the guild, spreading our influence across server boundaries, I knew that it could backfire. Influence can go both ways, subjecting my guildies to the wrong kinds of disparaging attitudes. The frustration generated by wiping alongside mouthbreathers was a plaque building up in our teams' arteries, unnecessary stress that could bleed into the progression team.

Mature and co. defeat Scourgelord
Tyrannus in a heroic 5-Man dungeon,
Pit of Saron

Pleasing Everyone

As I made my way through the Pit of Saron alongside Goreden, Milkmeh, Pallysmeku and a freshly-returned Kelden, an item of great purple power fell out of the hands of a slain Ymirjar Flamebearer. A battered hilt told the story of an ancient sword once used to defend Quel'Thalas from the encroaching Scourge, eventually meeting its fate via the banshee scream of its undead former owner -- a vampiric undead blood elf we'd soon pay a visit to. The group decided to roll greed on the item; as luck would have it, the hilt fell into my own bags as the virtual dice rolled in my favor.  But, no sooner I claimed my own hilt, than the quest item appeared again, both to Milkmeh and later to Goreden. Not long after the servers regained their stabilty, Blizzard announced that the Battered Hilt's drop rate was too high upon reflection, and the infamous blade appeared less and less. When it did make itself seen, money hungry profiteers snatched the hilt up, turning it over to the auction house for a sizable profit.

Quel'Delar would be my primary weapon until such time that a more destructive, cursed axe revealed itself to me. But it wasn't due to the reason you think.

---

Jungard's freshly updated forum posts detailing Icecrown Citadel were polished and professional. After bringing over the high level summaries posted on StratFu.com, he had taken the liberty of kicking off an initial strategy discussion, a conversation both Omaric and Bretthew lept in to at their first opportunity. ICC was to be delivered in a staggered release over the course of the next several months. A total of four wings stood to be conquered, and we could expect to see a new wing each month. Each wing had its own "final" boss, marked by a limited number of attempts. Once all the wings had been unlocked, ICC would then provide a raid buff, not unlike the LFD buff granted to wipes mentioned earlier. Following a similar schedule which unlocked the wings, the raid wide buff would grow from 5% to 10%, then to 15%, eventually ending at a final 30% bonus to health, damage, and healing. This gated progression ensured that the most dedicated, focused, hardcore raiding guilds would burn through content early on, yet still offer a mechanism for casual guilds to eventually experience that content.

It was an extremely important design which, for the first time in WoW's history, truly gave both the casuals and the hardcores a chance to consume content at each's own respective pace. Building upon what they had learned with previous tiers, coupled with the Emblem of Triumph currency which adequately augmented gear for new and seasoned players alike, tier 10 stood to provide the widest level of accessibility to raiding that we had ever seen. At the same time, tier 10 retained the integrity of risk vs. reward, an important measurable incentive to both social gaming classes. 

So, is it any wonder that its criticism remained intact?

The hardcores pounded at the table, claiming the gating mechanism stifled their own schedules, and was merely a ploy to artificially extend the life of the instance. Cataclysm, the next expansion, was still far off in the distance, and Blizzard needed a way to keep players motivated and returning. The hardcores claimed this insulted their intelligence and was a blasphemous way to parade the cause of raiding to others not like-minded. That Blizzard could even consider a raid-wide buff to dilute raid difficulty only salted the wound.

As for the casuals, none were pleased at the decision to disallow Shadowfrost Shards from dropping in their 10-Man raids. The material components necessary in crafting Shadowmourne were limited only to those guilds which tackled the most challenging content in the game: the 25-Man raid. Their 10-Man cries and pleas fell on deaf ears, as Blizzard remained steadfast in the decision: legendary items demanded an appropriate level of risk vs. reward, and 10-Mans had been rolled in as a convenience to those unable to participate in large guilds. Much time had passed since the days of Sunwell Plateau and Black Temple, and memories had grown short. By now, convenience had been all but completely masked by the rise of entitlement. And although Blizzard refrained from changing their stance on Shadowmourne, not all ears at Blizzard were deaf to their plight. Behind the scenes, well away from the eyes in my guild, discussions were already well under way as to what a $14.99/month subscription should entitle one to.

Mature and a DoD group escape from the Lich King
in under six minutes, earning "We're Not Retreating;
We're Advancing in a Different Direction"
Halls of Reflection

Gambling With PvP

Descendants of Draenor neither joined in the casual crying nor the hardcore hate. Our attention was focused inward, assimilating all info relating to the first four bosses in the Citadel. And with the administrative noose relaxed more than ever, I was able to sink my teeth into the most recent round of applicants. Jemb was the first of these, a truly outrageous hunter with an affinity toward achievement whoring, a gaggle of exotic beasts following in his wake. His obsession bordered on addiction, but was tempered by raw efficiency in raids, and his green bar very quickly bubbled to the top of Recount. Before long, Jemb earned the right to see every raid rotation he asked for, and putting him in meant world-first quality ranged DPS.

I also saw an increase in applicants more likely found skulking through the nether regions of Deathwing-US, those folks who chose to socialize with far shadier ilk. This translated into a surge of recruits whose prime function was PvP. Traditionally, this wasn't a group I poured buckets of faith into. Folks like Ben, and his brother Ouleg before him, were a crap shoot when it came time to field them in PvE. On the one hand, PvP focused players brought a set of extremely sharpened knives to the table; their skills at manipulating a virtual self online were unmatched...and with good reason. Morning, noon and night they thirsted for the blood of other players -- an opponent no scripted boss could match. But with their finely honed skills came with them all the other distasteful PvP baggage: inflated egos, a vocabulary tightly tuned to trash talk, and an apathy toward rules so thick you could cut it with a knife. Recruiting PvPers for the purposes of raid progression was like wielding the sun as a weapon: unmeasurable power at your fingertips could catapult your guild from mediocre to exceptional, but any attempts at utilizing such power usually ended with a catastrophic explosion.

I surveyed the apps, those who knew Anni, those who had jumped into a BG with Haribo, those who chummed up with Neps, and squeezed every last bit of energy it took to approve the app on my desk: Sentra. He played a warrior, spending the majority of his time bouncing between his arena ladder work, and camping noobs out in the world. Sentra looked to get his foot in the raiding door now that ICC "was a thing", but whatever he had written down on his app as a reason to apply to DoD, it held little weight. He, like so many PvPers with a taste for edged weapons, had only one thing on his mind: how fast can I wrap my fingers around Shadowmourne. I expressed to him that it would be a very long while before that opportunity arose; we had an overflowing core of melee, all ripe for adding Shadowmourne to their repertoire. He cared little about the wait, stating he had all the time in the world.

I asked for a second opinion.

"Yeah, he's fine," Neps assured me.

"You think everybody is fine!"

"Not Blain, he's a big meanie."

Hesitantly, I turned back to the app and fired off an approval email. My inner voice rung out.

You realize nothing good will come of this?

We're in a good place, I rationalized. If Ben can be shaped into someone responsible enough to text me when he's going to be late for raids, why couldn't Sentra?

You already know the answer to this. You're postponing the inevitable.

Perhaps, I thought, but I'll cross that bridge when I get there.

Neps offered a final thought, "You should check to see if he has an arena partner this season."

He had a great point. It might give me an opportunity to break the ice and get to know his side of things a bit clearer.

"I'm sure anyone would want a scrub like me that just happens to have a Shadowmourne."

"It is a nice weapon..." he fired back.

Yes. It will be.

3.21. Discriminatory Treatment

Neps confirms the evidence with Kerulak,
after they execute a pug clear of 40-Man Naxxramas
during The Burning Crusade.

Innocent By Association

The first time I repeated one of my mother's jokes in front of my wife, I knew there was a problem. I was raised in a small town named Parksville, along the coast of Vancouver Island, but my mother wasn't from there. She had been born in a town called Hudson Bay, in the northern regions of Saskatchewan. She had a conservative, strict family, and although the Holmes' were hard-working and quiet folk, they had a tendency to cling to some age-old biases. And as my mother learned from her environment, I too, absorbed these tendencies, without even giving them a second thought. So, when I sat down to dinner one evening and jokingly remarked:

"I wonder what the poor people are doing now?"

...my wife gave me a look of horror, her eyes wide with shock and embarrassment.

I knew there was a problem.

Part of this outdated programming led me to judge others too quickly, my first impressions resonating like a bell whenever it came time to make a decision. It happened time and again in my early days of running DoD, having already made up my mind about a player long after my gut continued to tell me otherwise. I'd ignore my gut, stick to my biased way of thinking...and end up making a bad judgement call. Ater was one of the first to show me this was just an illusion -- we think we think we know people in other groups better than we know ourselves.

What added to the complexity of my mother's lessons was a layer of morals, delivered in Aesop's fashion,  priming me for a certain way of thinking. These lessons, while noble in intent, often came across as black-and-white, good or evil, no gray area to explore. Among these was the familiar "You Are Who You Hang Around With". Run with a group of criminals, Mom reasoned, and you'll soon find that you've become a criminal as well.

This may explain why I grew to loathe the PvP community.

At face value, there was a lot to detest. PvPers made no secret that they felt they were "better than us". Raiding was for sissies and crybabies -- to them, the real skill came in how well you sized up another human being, how fast you turned their weak spots against them in the ring. Bosses were scripted; conversely, other players followed no such programming. PvPers talked a lot of shit, rarely opting to take the high ground when it came to dealing with other people. And why should they? They had their name, their titles and their gear lit up like the Las Vegas strip proving to us that they were true power in WoW. They played by nobody's rules but their own, they relied on nobody to get where they were. No oppressive guild could force a schedule onto them, tell them how to act or behave.

Every time I tried to push those biases aside and tolerate PvPers despite our differences, I'd always get a slap-in-the-face when I flipped between ElitistJerks.com and ArenaJunkies.com, the two online communities dedicated to the discussion of PvE and PvP, respectively. The former was a tightly run ship where only intelligent, thoughtful contributors were allowed. Moderation was swift and harsh to those who couldn't be bothered forming a coherent sentence. As for the latter, it was a cesspool of trolls, rife with profanity, accusation, and immaturity.

One thing has nothing to do with the other.

Neps & Mature in The Crimson Hall,
Icecrown Citadel

Trusting the Gut

When I began to contemplate another 2nd-in-command, I never gave any thought to promote Klocker because he'd hung up his healing hat. Klocker was now exclusively Retribution in our 25-Man progression raid. I needed a healer for a very important reason: Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings. The legendary mace assembled from fragments put the power of the Titans at the fingertips of the healer that wielded it. But Klocker's days of healing were behind him. He would flip from time-to-time as needed, but it was no longer his passion, and the new edict in Descendants of Draenor demanded players choose what they loved to do, not what we needed them to do. So, rather than make a move to convince Klocker to play a role he didn't enjoy, I looked to someone who embraced the role. Someone who lived, breathed and died healing. Someone who had been healing long after I had hung up Kerulak's hooves, and had no intention of switching -- who knew the ins and outs of the job. More importantly, someone who I could trust and whom made decisions that were aligned with my own. Someone fiercely dedicated and loyal to us.

Someone like Neps.

But, it was Neps’ attachment to PvP that gave me my initial hesitation for promotion. Neps regularly ran with a crew of folks that had traditionally proven to be be unreliable in the long term. They were PvPers in my eyes, that "other group" I was perpetually disgusted with. Somehow, I believed I was an expert judge of them, up on my high horse. Neps had never given me a reason to doubt his reliance, yet the PvP thing continued to bother me. What impact would it have on the raiders? Was there a risk of that "nobody's going to tell me what to do" mentality bleeding back down into the roster? We had filled spots throughout Vanilla and TBC with anything we could get our hands on, and while we benefited from having a large number of players across multiple interests to choose from, when we plucked from the PvP pool, it was a often a crap shoot. And I saw promoting Neps as a very real risk to allow more of that style of player to stick their foot in the raid door, only to cause further mayhem down the road.

The brothers Ouleg and Ben were two players in particular whom Neps spent a great deal of time with. Ouleg, when present, would tear into bosses in Serpentshrine Cavern with extreme prejudice, often dealing more damage than that of our regular raiding Warlocks. But, he was quick to come up with excuses to leave the raid if things looked bleak, “Yeah guys, I think my girlfriend's calling me for something” after our fifth wipe on Hydross the Unstable. Ben wasn't too far off from his brother. A fantastic player behind the wheel of a Shadow Priest or Boomkin...if you could get him to show up. If he wasn't completely drunk off his ass. And while neither Ouleg nor Ben themselves were the ones being considered for promotion, I continually dwelt on this association Neps had with them, and whether or not it would become a distraction.

Or worse.

A Second Opinion

I took Dalans aside and shared my concerns with him, broaching the possibility of promoting Neps as another 2nd-in-command to share duties. I told him of the plan involving Val'anyr, and how it made the most sense to go with Neps, but that I had lingering doubts. Dalans reminded me that Neps had been playing the role of Priest officer for nearly the entirety of The Burning Crusade, and had never shown me any reason to doubt his loyalty thus far. My gut told me he was the guy to go with, but the PvP "facts" continued to rub me the wrong way. When I brought up the concerns I had about the PvP crowd, Dalans was logical in his response.

"Anni was of the best officers this guild ever had. High Warlord, remember?"

He had a point.

"Wasn't Blain one of the first players on the server with a Vengeful Nether Drake in TBC?"

Two points for Dalans.

"I wouldn't worry too much about who he runs with. Neps is fine. I'd trust him before I would any of the other morons. If he hasn't given you any reason to doubt his dedication, he won't."

The second opinion was delivered, saying exactly what my gut was telling me all along. Go with Neps. Forget about the PvP crowd. Who he hangs with and what he chooses to do for fun has nothing to do with the person he is. And if Mom was right, and you truly become the type of person you hang around with...well, that would mean Neps was exactly that person right now.

...and there wasn't a single thing I could point to that would cause me to distrust him.

That evening, I went over the ground rules for 2nd-in-command, and made it clear he'd be the first in line to receive Val'anyr. He graciously accepted the promotion, and the guild joined in a round of congratulations for their favorite Priest on his continued service to DoD.

--

I glanced down toward the chat window in the lower-left hand corner of the screen.

Blain has come online

For a guy who retired from World of Warcraft four months earlier, he showed up an awful a lot. I sent him a tell.

“Hey”

“Sup”

“I’ve gone ahead and restored your administrative privileges to the guild. You won’t need to worry about the raid expectations, nothing’s changed there.”

I popped open the guild panel and clicked the promote button several times.

Blain has been promoted to Old God

"Carry on" I said in another whisper.

He replied with a smiley.

3.20. Mexican Hot-Chocolate

Haribo and co. assist Faleby
with his Dreadsteed quest,
Dire Maul

Gummy Priest

It was deep in the brush on the Isle of Dread, just south of Feathermoon Stronghold, that he finally caved in. I had been pursuing Haribo for months after a chance meeting when he offered to heal a party of us through 10-Man Scholomance. An undead priest, he came out of the woodwork of a guild named Forsaken Spirits, amazing me with his skills at healing. Scholomance was a brutal hour-and-a-half long ordeal and after having recently experienced a 45-minute power run thanks to the skilled players in Dirty Work, Inc., I knew exactly what type of player I needed to recruit. Kadrok and Graulm were most likely annoyed by my constant mention of this Priest and how desperately important it was to assimilate him. I needed a crew of players that set the bar high, virtual machetes slicing down any obstacles in our path. I fully intended to make Haribo one of those machetes. I harassed him for weeks, promising fame and glory in Molten Core and beyond. Each time he politely declined, but thanked me for considering him, and then proceeded to heal us in whatever dungeon we threw at him. I wouldn't take no for an answer. I stalked him until he was sick of  hearing about Descendants of Draenor, and when I found him alone on the Isle of Dread one day, standing alone among a pile of slain chimaeras, I went in for the kill. The undead priest who took his name after his favorite brand of candy, finally accepted my offer and joined the guild.

It wasn't long before Haribo rose to the position of Priest Officer. As I continued to aggressively recruit, building our roster larger in preparation for Molten Core, he continued to heal our players through dungeons like a pro, spending his off-hours healing Annihilation in Alterac Valley. And when the time finally arrived to assemble 40 players and dive deep into the Core, Haribo drove the healers -- making assignments, spamming macros, even developing a system of "healing buddies" which allowed Ater and his crew of tanks to chain pull mobs, making our clears an order of magnitude faster. Haribo stood diligently by our side as we plowed through Vanilla content. It was his dedication to keeping people alive that not only helped us become one of the furthest progressed Horde guilds on Deathwing-US during Vanilla, he instilled within players a new found interest in healing, a role often ignored by the masses as dull, uninteresting, and insignificant. Those  few players who mattered respected him for his ability. And hoped to learn from the master.

Nepster is spotted with Haribo moments
before the release of The Burning Crusade,
The Dark Portal

The Rogue That Healed

When Haribo announced his retirement from raiding at the start of The Burning Crusade, there was nobody in line to take his place. It was a time of transition; we'd been playing the same characters since launch. Leveling alts wasn't nearly as commonplace as it is today, because leveling itself was an act of raw willpower. I had dabbled in a few alts myself, but pushing any one of them to Level 60 demanded months of work, night after night. So, we had mains and we were invested in them. As time ran out on Vanilla and we counted the days until the Dark Portal opened to Outland, many players took the opportunity to start anew. Our old investments were suffocating. The Burning Crusade introduced Paladins to the Horde, and many of our healers re-rolled in order to breathe clean air again. But while the torrent of pink names flooded guild chat upon our arrival in Outland, one white name quietly took an invite and began the journey of following in Haribo's footsteps.

Neps had been a part of Descendants of Draenor since late Vanilla, one of the many faces that populated our 40-Man roster. My earliest memory of him is running 40-Man Naxxramas with us on his rogue, Nepster. Quiet and polite, he kept to himself, but never hesitated to jump at a moment's notice when the time to raid was upon us. He would spend his off-hours plumbing the depths of PvP with some of the old-school players in DoD, namely Haribo. Neps soaked up Haribo's knowledge like a sponge, learning all of his tricks, his tactics, day by day growing wiser and adept at handling himself in emergency situations. It was through these late night PvP sessions that Neps began to feel the Priest bug biting. To him, healing in PvP was a dark art, not one that many players chose to take up. The majority of players rolling characters to PvP dumped their effort into damage dealers, and were quick to complain when they had no healers to support them. Neps learned very quickly about the law of supply and demand. And if he took his responsibility with enough seriousness, his expertise would always be in demand.

So while the freshly invited Paladins dominated our attention at the start of The Burning Crusade, Neps quietly leveled his Priest. And, as was his demeanor, he took every opportunity to assist with heals that he could. The newly introduced 5-Man Heroics were a real test of strength for a group. Today, most 5-Man heroics are facerolled; there was no facerolling in the heroic version of The Steamvault, Shadow Labyrinth or The Shattered Halls. Each pack of trash had to be meticulously crowd-controlled, and accidentally pulling a 2nd pack was a guaranteed wipe under normal conditions. Pugging a 5-Man Heroic in TBC was almost entirely unheard of -- you ran with people you knew and trusted to minimize the amount of time that was wasted.

If Neps was your healer, you had a fighting chance.

Neps concurs on a successful
first kill of High King Maulgar,
Gruul's Lair

Everybody Loves Neps

As we ramped up to raid Gruul's Lair and Serpentshrine Cavern, Neps demonstrated a continued dedication to his fellow guildy. Whether it be assisting with a weekly Karazhan race between our various 10-Man teams, or helping another player become keyed, Neps never complained, never whined or moaned about repetitiveness or boredom. Every opportunity to assist in the healing department was a chance to flex his muscle, refine his skill, and fill the need that was so desperately sought after. Because of this affection toward his fellow guildy and his need to constantly improve, he made many friends in the process. His name soon became synonymous with Priest Heals whenever the topic came up. And, Neps always carried himself humbly, never spoke ill of anyone, never once revealing a loss of temper. He was, in short, the very definition of a model guild-member. He spoke rarely, but when he did, it was usually to deliver a dry, sarcastic punch-line, finishing someone else's joke, the virtual room filling with laughter as a result.

It was Neps' humble side that I felt players often underestimated. They mistook his solitude for an amateurish mentality, especially when it came to crediting his ability in raids having come from a PvP background. This was a foolish mistake. Unlike the PvP crowd which commonly talked a lot of shit and dissed one another openly, Neps kept his opinions to himself -- but he was no less aware of his opponents. It was from those late night PvP sessions, slowly developing as Haribo's apprentice, that he developed a keen sense of who were scrubs, and who were worth their salt. Other players could talk a big game, but Neps was quick to cut through the shit and tell if they were truly experts at the game, or just good at spinning more yarn. Once I caught wind of Neps' sixth sense, I moved quickly to make him the next Priest Officer. As expected, he humbly accepted.

Neps diligently served as Priest Officer through the remainder of The Burning Crusade, never once missing a raid, never once taking time off. His priority was his online family and keeping them alive through Lady Vashj, Kael'thas Sunstrider, Archimonde and Illidan the Betrayer. My trust in Neps grew to such a degree that I handed over the Master Looter and DKP import responsibilities to him, never once considering for even a moment that he would misappropriate an item or cook the books. And, when not honing his skills in dungeons or managing the priests, Neps returned to his original love of PvP -- his funny and always positive attitude drawing the attention of both Horde and Alliance players. It wasn't long before Neps himself had a following of fans. Descendants of Draenor's Ventrilo server soon became home to the enemy as they hopped in to chat with their favorite Priest. It soon became common knowledge in the guild that Neps was particularly fond of female players, and why wouldn't they be fond of him? He was never derogatory, never spoke in a sexist tone or demeaned them (as is very common in games where players are shrouded in anonymity), and was always friendly and supportive.

Neps was a charmer, loved by all. So, why was I hesitant to make him second-in-command?

Classism.

2.19. Blizzard's First Mistake

Esteemed

"People want to be considered good at something," Ater said, taking a bite out of a BBQ chicken sandwich. We used our lunch hours to get caught up on guild-related tasks and discussion, the majority of which centered around bracing for Tier 5. The locale was a Brother's BBQ on the corner of Washington and 6th, not far from the downtown area where we cranked out ColdFusion sites by day. For over two years, Ater had been a key figure in my guild, one of the many benefits I enjoyed as a result of assimilating The Final Cut many moons ago. He was a non-stop source of insightful leadership. I picked his brain at any opportunity. I expected today's conversation would touch on such items as Volitar joining him as a new Raid Assistant, the ever-fluctuating roster, or my recent assignment of being tasked with keeping Breginna's Druid active while she was away at work.

As it turned out, Ater had another topic on his mind altogether: losing our raiders to competing guilds.

"You're going to have regular performers, and you're going to have star performers. That doesn't make the regulars any less important, they're still very valid and play a very important role. But, if you had your choice of picking a regular or a star performer for the raid, who would you pick?" he asked me.

"Obviously, the star performer", I replied.

"Exactly! So, what makes them the star performer?"

I thought a moment, "Well, they're more than likely going above and beyond the call of duty. I mean, they kick ass. They seriously raid like professionals."

"That's exactly right, they play well. They do their job well."

I leaned back, and crossed my arms.

"I still don’t see what this has to do with us losing players to a shit-box trash-talking guild like Pretty Pink Pwnies."

"If the guild was a company," he said, "would you treat your sub-par employees and your star performers the same way?"

I laughed. "Hell, no! The star performers would get promoted."

He smiled in silence, taking another bite of his sandwich.

"...I'm not going to promote a bunch of people to officership because they top the damage meters."

He shook his head, "You're not thinking about it the right way. Forget promotion. I'm talking about acknowledgement. Re-affirm to them that they're valid -- that what they've done here....what they are doing here...is important. They're a contributor. Remind them that they have accomplished something significant...otherwise, there's nothing that differentiates them from the carries."

I paused to let it sink in. If I had paid more attention in my college psychology class, I'd probably already know this. We have a desire to be noticed, to feel like we matter, and when we contribute to the social community, we seek approval for our efforts; we want to know that what we've done has some significance. This is why I was losing players to Pretty Pink Pwnies. Not because they were a better guild, or further progressed, but that players felt accomplished. Bru might not have patted them all on the back each and every time they had a successful raid (because that was certainly not his style), but his guild members already had something to fill the void left by his personal appreciation and acknowledgement:

They had gear.

In the absence of that gear, what did I have to acknowledge my raiders' contributions? Nothing. They were all being treated kindly, respectfully, fairly and equally.

But they didn't want to be treated equally.

Graulm displays the completed Warlock
Dungeon (Tier 0) Set "Dreadmist",
Orgrimmar

The Problem With Equal Treatment

To feel confident and have the respect of others is the reason people seek out a hobby or area of interest - something that they can contribute to or gain recognition from. This need affects people with both low and high esteem, which makes it cover a wide gamut of individuals. Whether seeking fame and glory, or simply the label of an expert, a person will only pour effort into such a task if they believe it is attainable. Once a realization sets in that the recognition they seek cannot be attained, the person is very likely to shift gears -- turning to new places for acceptance.

We had players that busted their ass to get into our raids, performed at the top of their game, and could be considered experts on the server, but when it came to raid rotations, they were treated no differently than a person who played at an amateurish level. This problem existed as far back as Vanilla, but the difference in Vanilla was that the scale of a 40-Man raid effectively covered up the handful of players that were "carries". Now, being forced down into a 25-Man size, but with difficulty being just as unforgiving, the carries were all too apparent. After wasting weeks on Gruul's Lair and Magtheridon's Lair, stalling on boss kills, the star performers felt more like their efforts were going unrecognized, which in turn, led to the resentment of fellow raiders that were holding us back.

By incorrectly assuming "equal" and "fair" were interchangeable, I bred an environment of mediocrity instead of one that prioritized excellence.

And as my eyes widened with realization during that lunch-time conversation, while Ater finished his chicken sandwich, suddenly, the subtle everyday things that I previously paid no attention to had meaning and ramifications. Images flashed through my head as the last several years of my raiding history cycled back like an old movie projector. I saw our Nefarian kill, and players walking out of Blackwing Lair and into Alterac Valley, taking their newly acquired gear and blowing the Alliance apart. I remembered Taba and the excited dance and scream that followed his acquisition of Ashkandi. I remembered the day the final piece of Ten Storms dropped, and Kadrok graciously stepped aside, allowing me to complete my set. I remembered taking a screenshot of Graulm in Orgrimmar after finishing his Dreadmist Warlock set.

In that moment of epiphany, it all became clear what it was that frustrated and angered me to no end on the day we killed Magtheridon -- I knew why the Gruul kill had left me empty and dissatisfied.

It was Blizzard's First Mistake.

Left: Malefic Raiment (Warlock Tier 6 - PvE)
Right: Vengeful Gladiator's Dreadgear (Warlock Season 3 - PvP)

Consensual Worlds

There are two different schools of thought within World of Warcraft on where the depth and richness of endgame comes from. On one side of the argument are the raiders. These are the players that push as hard as they can to execute raid encounters, and they quantify their success by their speed, their efficiency and their overall world/server ranking. This school of thought considers the most important attributes of a player to be how well they work in a large team, do they communicate and respond to commands quickly? Are they expertly played, and can they react with lightning-fast reflexes to emergency situations? Can they contribute to a thoughtful, intelligent decision on the min/maxing of their raid makeup in order to most effectively execute a boss encounter? And, will they have the capacity to endure a fight, over and over, until they get it right, while they race other guilds at exactly the same time for a world first title? This is the raider, the player that pours their time and energy into PvE (Player vs. Environment), and this is one school of thought.

Another school of thought is that man vs. machine is not the real test of skill, but instead, when human minds are pitted against one another. Like so many games throughout history that pit a human being against another in a battle of wits and skill, whether it be Chess, Go, Poker, or any number of other games, skill comes down to a mastery of the game's rules and the ability to predict what their opponent will do -- and then counter it. To this school, "reading the opponent" is the true test. Within this school, players build strategies to defeat other classes, studying the enemy, hoping to discover where each of their strengths are... and what weaknesses can be exploited. In their quest to master PvP (Player vs. Player), they strive to best all human opponents who dare challenge them; undefeated champions in their own right -- the ultimate accolade of a PvPer.

While each school of thought maintains its own unique acknowledgement of success, these rewards are intrinsic, and therefore internalized by nature. A PvPer knows his worth by how how adeptly he slays other opponents, while a PvEer knows her worth by her completion of raids. Intrinsic motivators, however, fail to act as a validation when outside of their social groups, cast out into a virtual sea of faceless strangers that are constantly judging. It is at this point that humans turn to external validators; the more overt, tangible, easy-to-read and easy-to-understand types of rewards. Players fall on to these validators as a crutch, wiping away the friction, removing any doubt from their mind about their quest to attain expertise -- and not look dumb. And what better way to externally validate a player's performance in PvP or PvE than by the gear that they have acquired as a result of their effort.

Therein lies the dilemma.

Players that have turned to external motivators to validate their expertise have already given up on the internal, truer quantifiers. To them, the knowledge of defeating 10,000 players in a battle, or being the first on the server to clear all the raid content is not enough. All they have to lean on is the physical manifestation of their effort, the gear they wear and the weapons they wield -- so that in the sea of faceless strangers, their mind can take comfort in knowing they are perceived as successful. So, what happens when the internal motivators are absent, and the external motivators are null and void?

They are at a loss. They have no way to validate their quest to become good.

And what might cause those external motivators to be null-and-void?

When others acquire the same rewards for a completely different level of effort.

Ater taught me a valuable lesson that day, one that started me thinking about how I could no longer treat my amateur players the same as those who were truly experts. Lacking that external validation, that acknowledgement for their efforts, the experts were becoming resentful. They felt used, their time wasted...and they would move on to greener pastures to seek validation for accomplishment elsewhere. And in opening my eyes to this very real concern regarding my leadership of DoD, he solved the equation of my own inexplicable frustration and apathy toward Tier 4 -- which turned out to be much larger than just Tier 4.

In a sea of faceless strangers, our validation -- our contribution to the social environment of Deathwing-US -- came in the form of showing off what we had accomplished, the physical manifestation of our prowess. Our gear. But that gear no longer held any value or worth, for that very same gear was seen everywhere across the city of Orgrimmar. Everyone had that gear because everyone was PvPing. A few weeks in some arenas was all it took. Technically, the stats were different on each set, but visually, PvE gear differed in no way from PvP gear, save a minor palette shift in color. All the work we had poured into Maulgar, Gruul and Matheridon -- instantly invalidated. In my mind, PvPers were being treated exactly as PvEers, for an entirely different level of effort and dedication -- the qualifiers weren't even the same! They were being judged on their ability to stomp opponents into the ground; I couldn't care less! Yet there they were, hopping around Orgrimmar like rabbits, throwing their Season 1 gear in my face, while my guild bashed their faces against raid content.

I didn't want them to be treated like us. We were not equal.

---

We hear "never judge a book by its cover" and we know the idiom is a valuable edict to live by. It means well. It's the right thing to do. But it also takes effort, and doesn't come naturally to everyone. Only through growth, maturity, self-awareness and an ability to introspect can many of us rise to that level, and put our mind at ease in the knowledge that we have become great in the absence of external validation, that other people's judgement matters little. But to many in the faceless void, the quest to be accepted never ends. Their efforts must be validated, otherwise, they seek it elsewhere -- or worse, resent the success of others. Blizzard's decision to use the same sets of gear for two different schools of thought was most certainly one of practicality. From a business perspective, the costs of reducing labor by recoloring a pre-existing set of armor was a sound decision; it allowed them to hit their delivery date that much quicker. But the psychological impact it had on the player-base was vastly underestimated, and may have even been a contributing factor as to why TBC still struggled to grow interest in PvE after Vanilla.

I can only speak for myself in that it devalued our accomplishments, made us feel like raiding wasn't nearly worth the effort, and provided a backdoor to personal responsibility, as players gave up raiding and moved to arenas to acquire the same gear. To this day, I feel that it was Blizzard's First Mistake, and I hoped that they would not repeat it.